QJ10: The transition from Product Manager to Software QA Engineer. Reinvent yourself! The Career Journey of Sebastian Clavijo

Today's story will bring you a bit of difference. Sebastian Clavijo, a talented writer, dedicates himself to creating insightful content to share his knowledge and support the community.

Enjoy his story, told in his own words.

(Disclaimer: All views expressed in this post are solely my own and do not represent the views of my current or past employers, or any organizations or individuals I have worked with unless explicitly stated otherwise.)

A letter to my fellow Software QA Engineers

Hi friend testers,

One day, I told my wife, “I want to be a QA engineer!”. Her stunned response was, "What?! What is that?" Confusion on her face, she asked, "Why would you want to change what you're doing to do that?". She had never even heard of the job.

But let's not get too ahead of ourselves. Let’s start from the beginning.

As a kid, my parents always called me curious. With just a few clues, I could figure things out quite accurately. They said I had an innate ability to notice when things were not quite right—this trait has been both a blessing and a curse and played a significant role in my journey towards QA.

Early on, I was fascinated by computers. In 8th grade, I learned COBOL while my friends played games. I spent my time hacking games on my Amstrad 128K from audio tapes to 3" floppy disks. Those were fun times and early signs of my passion for quality and attention to detail.

Let’s fast forward…

On the brink of completing my computer science engineering degree, I wanted to broaden my horizons and explore other cultures. I got a scholarship to teach in Buenos Aires, Argentina. When I told my mom, she asked, "Why? Aren't you fine here?" But I knew it was something I had to do, and I was right; it was one of the most enriching experiences of my life. Teaching in college in another country was fun, but the personal experiences and people I met made it unforgettable. Visiting a deprived area school where one of my new friends taught highlighted the stark realities of life, deepening my empathy, and leaving a lasting impact on me.

My majors were in Computer Architecture and Technology of Communications, but I loved maps. They tell good stories, and who does not like a good story? I started working with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and loved it. As an intern, my first job after college involved creating by myself the first GIS in Spain to manage both High Voltage and Distribution for electric companies. It was both cool and fun—nothing beats creating something from scratch. Soon, I became a mentor and technical supervisor to several engineers, emphasizing the importance of quality and precision.

I believe one thrives best in a small company or startup. These companies let you wear many hats and help you understand a product from inception to release, and what users really need because you hear directly from them. So, when a Spanish startup asked me to join them, I jumped at the opportunity. We were just a handful of people, working in the owner's garage. It was risky—I was about to marry my wonderful wife (yes, the same one who questioned QA at the beginning of this story).

In this small company, I faced many technical challenges, including creating a model for network topological analysis over an Oracle 8i database, before this was even supported by Oracle Spatial. Unsure how to proceed, my manager proposed, "Give it to Sebastian. If somebody can do it, it's him. He will figure it out". With no margin for error and an aggressive deadline, I developed and hammered the model until the last nail was in place—through massive and brutal tests. Many years later, I heard this model was still being used.

After my challenging but fulfilling experience at the startup, I realized just how much I thrived on problem-solving and ensuring the quality of complex systems. I was asked many times during my career as a developer why I spent as much time testing my own programs as implementing the solution, and my answer was always the same: "Somebody is going to use this, so it has to work flawlessly. I owe it to them to ensure they have the best experience possible. Also I want to sleep well at night", with a smile on my face.

After a few years helping this company grow from 6 to over 100 employees, I had established a strong reputation in the GIS ecosystem in my home country. I was leading a group of engineers, supervising multiple projects, working as a consultant, and acting as the liaison between developers, clients, and users. My role had evolved beyond just technical challenges; it involved strategic planning, team building, and fostering client relationships. This holistic experience gave me a deep understanding of both the technical and business aspects of product development. And that's when I proposed to my wife that we move to the US and try something different.

I received an offer to work for an emerging startup that was creating a very innovative product. The excitement of being part of something new and groundbreaking was exhilarating. This startup was focused on leveraging cutting-edge technology to revolutionize the user experience in the realm of outage communication.

I have to say that the first 4 months were some of the hardest in my life. Not only did I have to learn multiple technologies and programming languages I had never worked with in just a few weeks, but I also had to adapt to a completely different work culture and operate in a language I was not proficient in at that time. To make things even more challenging, the company was in a different state, so I worked remotely from the Pacific Northwest—this was 12 years before remote work became the new normal due to the pandemic. It was tough, but I knew that if I could make it, nothing could stop me.

I started working with this promising new product for publishing power outages over maps on the internet, enabling people to be informed of their service interruptions in practically real-time. The position of the outages had to be precise, and the information provided to users needed to be accurate and reliable. Thanks to my programming skills, holistic approach to projects, familiarity with clients and users, and unwavering pursuit of quality and a superior user experience, I progressed through almost every role in software and product development: developer, support, analyst, architect, technical lead, and finally product manager.

As product manager, I took charge of overseeing the quality process, devising and designing comprehensive load and scalability performance testing. My goal was to fine-tune the system to handle enormous loads without compromising reliability. This rigorous approach paid off significantly. During one of the most severe winter storms in US history, our system withstood several million page visits in a single day, performing exceptionally under extreme conditions with no downtime. It was a testament to the robustness and resilience built into the product through meticulous QA planning and execution. All this effort was highly rewarded as the product became the indisputable market leader in its class, used by over 50 major utilities and providing services to 40% of the population of North America. It was also considered the most reliable outage map with the best user experience in the market.

To me, what made the difference between a just OK system that simply does the job and a leader in its class is a superb user experience, and that the system is there for you when you need it the most. Performance, reliability, and usability are the three keys to successful products.

Product managers are not only the visionaries and the image of the product in front of the client, but most importantly they are the voice of the customer, the user. In this role, you truly understand how important the user experience is, how frustrating it can be when the system is slow or does not do what it is supposed to do, or when an interface is not intuitive.

I enjoyed and learned from all the different roles I worked in. However, quality in software was always one of my top priorities in all the work I had done. My deep interest in the new testing frameworks that were emerging led me to spend personal time getting familiar with the technical aspects and best practices in automation testing. Additionally, as a parent of a neurodivergent child, my personal life was filled with enough chaos that I couldn't continue with the additional stress and demands that came with the position of a product manager.

After working successfully for several years in this position and nurturing a product that I helped create and grow from a mere seed, I came to my wife and told her:

“I want to be a QA engineer.”

Her stunned response was:

“What?! What is that?" Confusion on her face, she asked, "Why would you want to change what you're doing to do that?". She had never even heard of the job.

With a smile on my face, I explained in detail what the job of a QA engineer entails, what they do, and what their motivations are. And my wife, who knows me better than anyone in the world after a quarter-century together, responded to me:

"Hahaha, you were totally made for THAT JOB!!!".

Since then, I have helped my company improve and standardize the QA processes and become an integral part of our Architectural Review Process. I introduced visual testing, created multiple plugins and programs on our platform to eliminate redundancies and reduce maintenance overhead, started a QA cross-training program with workshops focused on best practices, and streamlined the review process with junior QA members.

I also started a Cypress blog a few months ago that tackles complex themes and has gained significant popularity within the QA community. Additionally, I actively contribute to the Cypress Discord and other QA forums, sharing my experiences and insights. I also publish open-source plugins that address long-standing gaps in the Cypress ecosystem, including areas like Accessibility and JSON Schema validation.

The other day, I was telling my wife, "It has been a long time since I enjoyed and had so much fun doing my work." She smiled back at me and said, "I can tell!"

Looking back on my journey, it’s clear that every experience, role, and challenge has led me to where I am today. From my early days of curiosity and problem-solving to my deep dive into cutting-edge technology and quality assurance, every step has been a learning experience. The transition from product manager to QA engineer wasn’t just a career move; it was a return to my core passion for attention to detail, quality and user experience.

Cheers!

“I believe I have worked in nearly every role within the world of software and product development: analyst, developer, support, consultant, software engineer, tech lead, and product manager. But one day, I had a realization... Sometimes, you need to reinvent yourself to rediscover your true self. That's how I became a Software QA Engineer.”

— Sebastian Clavijo Suero

Blog: https://dev.to/sebastianclavijo

GitHub: https://github.com/sclavijosuero

NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/~sclavijosuero

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